Love Comes Quietly - Robert Creeley

Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me,
in the old ways.

What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way.



from For Love: Poems 1950-1960, Charles Scribner & Son's 1962

The Rain - Robert Creeley

All night the sound had
come back again
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease
even the hardness
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent ---
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.


from For Love: Poems 1950-1960, Charles Scribner & Son's 1962

The Language - Robert Creeley

Locate I
love you some-
where in

teeth and
eyes, bite
it but

take care not
to hurt, you
want so

much so
little. Words
say everything.

I
love you
again,

then what
is emptiness
for. To

fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full

of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.



from Selected Poems, Charles Scribner & Son's, 1976

The Carnival - Robert Creeley

Whereas the man who hits
the gong dis-
proves it, in all its
simplicity---

Even so the attempt
makes for triumph, in
another man.

Likewise in love I
am not foolish or in-
competent. My method is not a

tenderness, but hope
defined.




from Selected Poems, Charles Scribner & Son's, 1976

Robert Creeley - Passes on

Yes, Robert Creeley has left us. He lived a long and full life with a bunch of poetry published.

''There are two things to be said about Robert Creeley's poem," the critic John Simon once wrote. ''They are short; they are not short enough."

I am amongst those who liked the shortness of his poetry. He wrote in a normal everyday language more in the William Carlos Williams vein than in the T.S. Eliot literary reference vein.

I have only two of his books on my shelf. Some pages are marked with the corners turned down. Reviewing them now takes me back quickly to a time long ago. Life was so much different then. They do contain some memorable lines.

I'll post a couple of my favorites here. It may be an introduction to someone you had not read before. You can still read him. His legacy is such that he has left that behind for us.

Goodbye Robert!